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anna.laclaque

ROOM INSTALLATION.VIDEO.VOICE.PERFORMANCE.PAINTING

CV

anna.laclaque is trained as a singer and pianist. As a singer (Annette Stricker) she has had an international career, particularly in the field of contemporary musical theater. She has worked with outstanding directors such as Achim Freyer and choreographers such as Trisha Brown and Reinhild Hoffmann and has been a soloist in the ensemble of the Frankfurt Opera, among others. “In the role of Lady Macbeth, German mezzo-soprano Annette Stricker returns to the Festival after her outstanding portrayal of the Ducess in Luci mie traditrici.” NEW YORK TIMES

Influenced by her work as a singer in contemporary musical theater, the artist switched to visual arts in 2010 as anna.laclaque. Since then she has worked freelance and developed transmedia spatial installations into which she integrates experimental videos, her voice and her paintings. In 2012, she founded the art space laclaque.raum für performance in Braunschweig, where she designed voice performances and video projections in public spaces, created multimedia spatial installations using electronic media, performed live improvised electroacoustic music on concert tours with her trio Konkret zu Abstrakt, and designed stage spaces with experimental videos and paintings (Projekttheater Dresden, Ruhrtriennale Essen, Stadttheater Bremerhaven). From 2019 to 2023, she was First Chair of the BBK Braunschweig. anna.laclaque has shown her works at, among others, Hole of Fame in Dresden, Projektraum-Bahnhof/Kleve, Walkmühle/Wiesbaden, Concordia in Enschede, Allgemeiner Konsumverein and Städtegalerie/halle267 in Braunschweig, and Bedarfanstalt in Hamburg. In 2020, she initiated the international art project art mutation.online. She has received numerous grants for performance and exhibition projects. anna.laclaque is a member of the Association of Berlin Artists and lives and works in Berlin and Nice, France.

ARTIST STATEMENT

The THEME of anna.laclaque’s art is the representation of the fluid diversity of the individual. Her research approach is based on the thesis that every individual is composed of multiple selves that conflict with one another and manifest themselves externally in different ways. anna. defines these various possible selves, isolates them, and recomposes them to make the complexity and fluidity of individuality tangible. anna. derives her artistic material from performative work with her own body and voice. Thus, the artist is both a medium and a projection surface for the viewer. In her work, she confronts the various states of the self with the outside world and explores the origins of the individual as part of and product of their environment, how they stand in the world, and how they interact with it. The artistic products of this research are usually complex multimedia installations whose spatiality allows the spectrum of the various facets of the self to be expanded and made tangible. For anna., art is communication; her spaces thrive on interaction with the viewer. Thus, her work can be placed not only within the artistic performance tradition, but also in relation to theater, a central historical site of (self-)discovery and catharsis.

INTERDISCIPLINARY WORK anna.’s work benefits from the breadth of her own artistic disciplines. She interrelates and intertwines the media of singing, performance, video, and painting. These transmedia transformations enable a maximum diversity of perspectives on the multiple facets of the self.

PERFORMANCES The artist’s trained operatic voice plays a central role in her performances. Singing flows into the works as a structural means of expression. The use of live electronics serves to alienate and multiply the voice, making the facets of the person acoustically perceivable.

SPATIAL INSTALLATIONS AND VIDEOS Anna.laclaque’s performances are the starting point for the design of complex, multimedia spatial installations. The performances are documented in videos and audio recordings and then artistically processed for the installations. Anna.laclaque uses feedback or layering of sound and image to create spaces. The feedback in the image enables the subject to confront themselves.

PAINTING Transmedia work is also central to anna.laclaque’s paintings: numerous emotional moments from videos are compressed into stills and then transferred and superimposed onto the canvas. This gives them new dynamic contexts, disintegrating, reacting with each other, moving, and reinventing themselves. This translation of video into painting creates an evolution of forms, all the way to abstraction. In this way, anna.laclaque develops a repertoire of forms and symbols that emerge from movements and interactions.